A GROUP of leading charities last night launched GakAid, a joint Christmas appeal urging celebrities to donate one percent of their nosebag money to Africa.

Campaigners say the amount of cocaine a mid-ranking celebrity hoovers up in just one week is equivalent to 250 working wells, 500 teachers or a fairly large flock of appealing black-faced goats.

GakAid co-ordinator Bill McKay said: "We're not saying celebrities shouldn't get fuged-up - it is an integral part of the showbiz milieu - but by moderating their intake, or switching to malaria tablets ground up with PCP, they could really make a difference.

"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Give a man the hundred quid you were going to spend on friskie dust and he might buy a fishing net and you might remember a time when you were not an empty, talentless ball of nothing."

The GakAid team will send celebrities an envelope marked 'Drug Money for Africa' in which to stick their spare fifties.

McKay added: "And it's not just money that would otherwise go to the dealers. Often the celebrities will leave behind a rolled-up fifty on a toilet cistern as they get whisked off to a private hospital for a life-saving adrenaline jab directly into the heart."

One girl band member said: "Every weekend I do loads of cocaine in the toilets of London members' clubs, usually in a cubicle with a fat, blazer-clad TV producer and some crazy bint who was in a reality show and has since moved up to pay-per-view donkey porn."